I haven't. I know precisely why.
I am good at reading situations. It is one of the things that made me what I am: the ability to correctly assess a set of variables and arrive at an accurate conclusion.
But this time, no matter how much I work the variables, I'm back to square one. I can't make sure she will say yes.
That's the part I haven't looked at directly. Not because I flinch from difficult truths. I'm afraid of this particular answer because it points at something no amount of money can fix.
If she says no, it won't be because the job is wrong or the city is wrong or the timing is wrong.
If she says no, it will be because I'm not enough. Me. Demetrius Thornwood.
If that's not enough, there is no solving it. No calculation adjusts for it. You cannot leverage your way out of being insufficient.
I sit with that for a moment.
I try to convince myself that I have every angle covered. The lease is signed. The offer arrives Friday. She is smart and perceptive and she knows me, underneath all the years and the damage, she has always known me. When she sees what I've built for her, she'll understand.
She'll understand.
The knock is quiet but I startle anyway.
"Come in," I say, and then she does.
Maddie in a nightgown is, empirically, a lot. The thing is pale and soft, loose at the hem, with a little drawstring she hasn't bothered pulling, so it slides off one shoulder and exposes her collarbone and the line of her neck. She is barefoot. Her hair is down. She has a glass of red wine in one hand and she takes onelook at the state of my desk and her mouth turns to a sexy, pouty frown.
My cock stirs to life.
"It is almost midnight," she says. "I was getting tired of waiting for you."
"I'm so sorry."
"You've been working non-stop all week." She comes in and takes a dainty sip of her wine. "You need to let out some tension or you'll snap like a twig."
She crosses to me with that wicked smile, the one that makes my cock instantly and painfully hard. I look up at her and my breathing accelerates.
She's so beautiful, so blindingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.
And then she leans down and her lips close on mine. My hand finds her jaw before my brain has fully processed what's happening.
She tastes like the wine and something underneath it that is just Maddie and makes my entire body tingle. I kiss her back, my hunger for her immediate and imperious. Then I pull back and brace my forehead against her, breathing in her smell, her breath, everything that makes her the center of my universe.
"Are you happy with me?" I ask.
She pulls back a few inches and looks at me, an unreadable expression on her soft, perfect face.
"Yes," she says. "I'm very happy, right now." She tilts her head. "Are you happy with me?"
"Happy with you? No, I'm not happy with you." Her perfect face scrunches and I brush her cheek with my thumb. "What I feel when I'm with you is not just happiness. I feel complete, perhaps for the first time in a long, long time. When I'm with you, I have everything I could ever have wanted."
Don't you have enough already? Agatha's words, again. Yes, I have enough. As long as I have Maddie with me, I'll always have enough.
"I love everything about you," I say. "I want to make up for every year we wasted."
Her fingertips trace along my jaw, which does not improve my cognitive function.
"Are you telling me what I think you're telling me?" she asks.
"I'm telling you I love you." Plain. There is no version of this that benefits from elaborate construction. "I've always loved you. I will love you for the rest of my life."
